For Fairy Tail
by Mrs. HopeEstheim
Summary: Part of him was Mest, of Fairy Tail and the other part was Doranbolt, of the Magic Council. There were times when he was more Mest than Doranbolt, but that was fine with him. - This is just a story about Mest during the absence of the main cast and his sense of relief at their return.


**This was spur-of-the-moment, but I love Mest...and so I wrote about him again. Well, sorry, it's Doranbolt...but whatever.**

**EDIT: Also...this story is a one-shot. Despite the note it ends on, there will be no more. Where it ends is me adding suspense to the suspense that is already present in Hiro Mashima's Fairy Tail manga world. I'm just using foreshadowing to emphasize the manga's foreshadowing. If that makes sense. Thanks!**

* * *

There wasn't really anyone who could understand his intense need to do whatever he could to help Fairy Tail after…well, it was self-explanatory. That…_incident_…was a complete disaster. Twenty-one of the world's best mages, the family and friends of so many good people, were gone in an instant. They were so brave up until the very end, never willing to give up—because he was certain they'd still been fighting the inevitable until the very last moment. It was just how they were in the few days he'd been acquainted with them.

Doranbolt was a member of the lower echelons of the Magic Council and had just been sent to observe Fairy Tail…perhaps even find a way to bring them down from the inside…but they'd saved him, too. He couldn't quite explain it, but when he had threatened Wendy…or when Natsu got pissed at him…or when they refused his help when he would have saved them…their determination made him feel useless and weak. They made him realize that his job wasn't everything.

For those brief moments, Doranbolt wasn't Doranbolt of the Council at all; he was Mest, of Fairy Tail.

So, as a temporary member of Fairy Tail, his heart was aching when Tenrou Island went up in a flash of light—the breath attack of the mighty Acnologia. And, even worse…there was nothing left after the attack. Mest—no, he had to return to being Doranbolt now—led the search parties of the council for months and when they retracted most of their aid, he continued to search until they forced him to stop. The members of Fairy Tail continued to search for most of that first year…but slowly they lost heart and eventually they searched no more.

And for seven years, Doranbolt and Fairy Tail were broken.

* * *

"What do you mean, we can't give aid to Fairy Tail?" Doranbolt cried indignantly, facing down the head financial officer for the council. He'd heard that what was left of Fairy Tail had been made to abandon their old guild because they could not get enough jobs without their missing members. He still called them missing because the Mest part of him couldn't accept the word 'dead' yet, even three and a half years later. "Can't you tell they need our support now more than ever?"

"After all that they have done _against_ us in the past?" the financial head fairly roared. "You want to help them after they have defied us again and again and ignored our bills for damages? You want to save a guild that is only full of worthless _wretches_ now that their other members are gone—"

"_They're not worthless_!" Doranbolt's reply was nothing short of furious. His shout echoed through the hall and drew the attention of every single council personnel within earshot. "Don't ever call them that again! They are brave and loyal and will fight to the very last breath in their bodies when the cause is right! Don't you _dare_ insult the best mage guild in all of Fiore—in the entire _world_—in front of me!"

And before Mest could get a response—because he was Mest right now, not Doranbolt—he disappeared into thin air, teleporting directly to the dock in Hargeon where he had set sail for the S-Class Exams with those most precious members of Fairy Tail. His fists were clenched so tightly that his nails were digging into his palm, but he didn't care. The empty space on the horizon where Tenrou Island should have been mocked him, as if proving that there was nothing he, a lowly member of the council, could do.

But there was, for he was Mest of Fairy Tail.

* * *

Macao and Wakaba stared at the mail together, disbelieving.

For one person, the sum of 300,000 jewels was a nice number, but split among all the members it wouldn't be nearly as pretty. Despite that…it would help. It would help much more than they could have hoped for.

"Who…sent this?" Wakaba finally asked, looking at his best friend in confusion.

"I don't know," Macao responded slowly, picking up some of the money as if to be reassured that it was real.

In Era, at the headquarters of the Magic Council, Doranbolt wore a self-satisfied grin and walked with a little more spring in his step than he had in the last three and a half years. He knew it wasn't much, but it would be a start, and that wouldn't be the last time he sent half—or even more than half—of his month's pay to aid in the survival of what remained of the once great Fairy Tail.

* * *

It had been six years and eleven months, and Doranbolt bowed his head in front of a gravestone.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Heartfilia," the council mage sighed, looking with sad eyes at the man who had helped in his endeavors to keep Fairy Tail alive even though the guild had continued to slowly crumble over the years. "I'm sorry that I couldn't find your Lucy and bring her back in time."

They had vowed to bring Fairy Tail back to its former glory together, Judo Heartfilia and what was left of Mest, inside Doranbolt. They had promised that Fairy Tail would rise again, stronger than ever before, and everything would be all right again. And once they had helped the guild rise from the ashes, like a phoenix, the twenty-one who were lost would come back. Even though Doranbolt knew it was a vain wish, that the mages he had spent so little time with but respected so much were most likely dead, it never hurt to hope. Sometimes hope was all they had.

"I'll continue with our plans," Doranbolt bowed one more time. "And when they come back, I'll watch over all of them, just like I know you'll be doing. Please continue to help me, Mr. Heartfilia."

And just like that, the council mage turned away from the grave of his comrade and, for a brief moment, Mest was once again reborn inside him. The heart of a Fairy Tail mage never faded completely, and he was just beginning to learn that.

* * *

"And the biggest news of the day—" the radio lachrima on a table underneath the window blared, and for some reason Doranbolt turned his attention to it, even though it had just been noise in the background for a while.

"I don't believe this at all, you know," the other anchor cut across.

"But you should! It's completely true!" the cheerful woman insisted. "After seven years, no one in the world thought this day would come—but it has! That's right, everyone—they're back! They're alive! The famous Titania, the Salamander, the Demon Mirajane! The man with crushing powers, Gildartz Clive! The shocking discovery—the excommunicated Laxus Dreyar! Former Phantom Lord members Juvia Loxar and Gajeel Redfox…they're all alive!"

_B-bump. B-bump. B-bump._

The only thing Doranbolt could hear aside from the radio lachrima was his heartbeat, his pulse pounding in his ears. It couldn't be…!

"This report says that today, all eighteen of the Fairy Tail mages lost seven years ago—"

"Twenty-one mages," Doranbolt hissed. They were forgetting those cats—and the cats had seemed so important, although he didn't know why.

"—were all found on Tenrou Island, which emerged from the depths of the sea today in a giant bubble! It could be seen for miles, and by some sort of whim of fate, Fairy Tail members were already heading in that direction on a lead from Blue Pegasus to begin the search anew!"

"There's more, though," the man, who sounded a little less cheerful than his female co-anchor, began. "Apparently the guild Twilight Ogre, who had been terrorizing Magnolia and the smaller Fairy Tail for years, was attacked earlier this evening. There is not word who attacked them…but perhaps the returning members of Fairy Tail wanted revenge for all the injustices done to their nakama over the years?"

"That's highly probable," the woman broke back in with a giggle, "but you didn't hear me say that, all right? We wouldn't want them in trouble with the council when they just got back! But aside from this, there is one more teensy little detail about the Fairy Tail mages we've yet to discuss! What could that be, you ask? Well…according to eyewitness reports…they haven't aged a day!"

The glass in Doranbolt's hand slipped and shattered on the floor.

* * *

"All one hundred will be my opponents," Erza Scarlet declared, facing Pandemonium. "My challenge right will be one hundred."

The referee, or whatever he was, spluttered incoherently, but whatever protests he put forward were blatantly disregarded and the Titania stepped forward. Mest stared in disbelief. It was one thing for Mirajane Strauss to step forward in a battle portion when she hadn't been seen fighting in years, even before their disappearance…but Mest thought Erza was being just a little too cocky here. She couldn't possibly…!

Someone called to Doranbolt, a friend from the council who had once donated 50,000 jewels to his 'Help Fairy Tail' cause, but he wasn't paying any attention. He was back in the world of Fairy Tail as Mest, and had been since he'd first seen the Fairy Queen step into Pandemonium.

He could only watch with bated breath as the scarlet haired warrior flashed from place to place, eliminating enemies as if they were no more than flies. He broke out in a sweat when she got hit by a nasty looking claw, but the next slice of her sword dispatched the monster that had injured her. Doranbolt was lost in the graceful dance of blades and claws and blood—it didn't matter anymore that he was a member of the council and rising in the ranks. All that mattered at this instant was that Fairy Tail was _back_, and they looked like they were going places.

"And Fairy Tail A's Erza Scarlet dominates! A victory that brooks no complaints!"

The shout echoed through the stadium, and Doranbolt gave in. He rested his forehead on one hand and tears leaked to the surface, but soon he rose to his feet and cheered.

"Fairy Tail is back, Mr. Heartfilia," he looked to the sky, and once more he was Mest rather than Doranbolt. "They're really back."

And when they took one-two finishes for the day's games, he cheered right along with everyone else.

"Everything worked out, didn't it, Judo?" he laughed a little, watching the exuberant Fairy Tail members in the crowd.

But he didn't realize that there were more challenges to come—something that could destroy this newfound peace indefinitely and break the hearts of Fairy Tail along with it.

* * *

**Well, what do you think? I might have gotten a bit confusing with the Mest vs. Doranbolt thing, but I like him best as Mest. And I didn't mean to rhyme that, it just happened.**

**Anywho…I feel relieved that I wrote this. And then I ended it on a darker note, but oh, well. I'm kind of worried about the Eclipse plan, though. Aren't you guys?**


End file.
